


ghost-silent

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Introspection, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, ferre and courf are radical anticaptialist antifascist assassins what more do you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 21:57:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12850341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Combeferre,” said the assassin, twirling the butterfly knife between his fingers and gazing at him with sultry, heavy-lidded eyes, “At first, these dates were interesting, but after the third dead fat cat, it’s getting a bit old.”





	ghost-silent

This was the part of the night Combeferre loved the most, between one and four in the morning, when the streets lay ghost-silent and the moon hung solitary in the sky. The still, inky blackness swallowed his light footsteps, the only sound save for the occasional siren and the intoning hum of the streetlights which bathed the desolate alleyways in a pearl-silver luster. Combeferre stared at the pinprick light of stars, like God had poked holes in the blanket of night above his head. He slid the silencer attachment over the barrel of his gun.

 

The job was simple enough - a run of the mill B-and-E, eliminate the mark, slip out and wait for the subsequent chaos to erupt come daybreak.

 

When Combeferre had gotten involved with activism, he never thought he would assassinate politicians for a living.

 

There was a part of his conscious that screamed and thrashed in protest, like a raging tempest, begging him to stop, to pick up the shattered remains of his morals, his humanity, and leave, let him live, but that part of him was hard to listen to when his mark supported the construction of a coal mine, using government funds, which would poison the surrounding ecosystems and threaten the livelihood of those living nearby.

 

Combeferre’s mark had probably indirectly murdered more people than he had. He was a judge of sorts, striking a gunshot of justice that would never befall the mark otherwise.

 

There was surprisingly little security for the mark’s ostentatious house (there never is, he shouldn’t be surprised at this point - rich murderers think that their money will protect them from accountability). The house was as silent as the streets outside, yet lighter, the clinical white walls chased away the night’s dark glow. Combeferre couldn’t help but scan the house as he crept towards the master bedroom - high ceilings, ornate decor, antique furniture, golden knick-knacks that looked like they would cost more than his apartment. A storm thundered in his stomach, sick at the sight of this luxury, while others wasted away into dust.

 

It was hard to feel conflicted at the thought of murdering this asshole.

 

He knew the mark almost intimately - he studied the house’s floorplan religiously, shadowed him like a second skin, an omnipresent ghost, clandestinely haunting the extravagant tomb of a _bourgeois_ scumbag.

 

Combeferre turned down the hallway towards the bedroom, but the darkness rippled ahead of him. He raised his gun instinctively, like a viper, venom drip, drip, dripping down razor teeth. What greeted him in the murky shadows was decidedly not his mark, but a mirror-image of himself, the same cocked gun and stern, icy glare, a body couched and closed, ready to both fight and flee at a moment’s notice.

 

The other man looked over the barrel of his gun, face masked in the half-shadows. Combeferre’s  grip on his weapon tightened as he spoke, “Who the fuck are you?”

 

The man’s eyes narrowed, attempting a domineering glare, which was rather difficult considering he was about five-foot-six, “I should ask you the same question.”

 

Combeferre swallowed thickly. This should never have happened. He was an expert assassin. Remorseless. A blade in the dark of righteous fury. How did he not notice the second person in the mark’s house?

 

_Unless…_

 

“You’re an assassin,” the two hitmen said simultaneously.

 

“Huh,” the man grinned as he lowered his gun, eyes glinting with a mischievous shine, “well, you’re welcome to do my job for me.”

 

Combeferre kept his eyes (and gun) trained on him as he slipped into the master bedroom. He hadn’t survived this long by letting guard down, by trusting any guy intending to kill the same rich motherfucker. His mark snored, tangled up in snow-white sheets, drooling onto his pillow. Combeferre didn’t think twice.

 

He pulled the trigger. The gunshot was silent. As expected. Red began to bloom across the icy bed.

 

Combeferre searched the hallway but the other assassin was already gone.

 

***

 

Combeferre glanced up at the security cameras, waiting for the red light to blink with a sinking stomach and a panicky heart that beat like a drum in his ears. Blood pounded and cried through his veins. The light didn’t flash, and Combeferre thanked a god he no longer believed in for Eponine’s hacking skills.

 

 _“Remember,”_ came Cosette’s omniscient voice in his ear, _“you have exactly eight minutes before the security guards realise the cameras have stopped working, maybe less.”_

 

“Easy-peasy,” Combeferre joked.

 

The workplace was brightly lit, despite that it was the middle of the night, a mile away from the comforting shadow of darkness he felt at home in. No, in the light, he was exposed, on display for all the world to see, poking and prodding him, dissecting him to discover what made him tick. The light was a liminal slice of time. Reality rippled, like a stone skimmed across a still, murky pond. The world was suspended in a luminous glow of eerie dissonance. Everything about this screamed wrong, bad.

 

The mark’s office was around the corner. She was a workaholic, sleeping on her desk more often than her actual bed. Combeferre stifled the voice of unease inside him, pleading with him to turn around and spare her.

 

 _What,_ he asked the pacifist in him, _like she spared those Bangladeshi workers, who died because she didn’t want to cut into her own profits and repair that textile factory?_

 

It wouldn’t bring back the hundreds of dead workers, but his mark would see retribution for the crimes she had committed. No sin should go unpunished. Some would argue that God should decide who lives and who died - Combeferre had given up on religion long ago, but he was of the staunch belief that any deity that allowed hundreds to die for one woman’s monetary gain was no god at all.

 

The gun felt heavy and cold in his hands, a refreshing anchor to steady him in the hot, scalding gaze of the anaemic lights. All the offices and corridors looked the same, blurring together, as if he was viewing the world underwater, fragmented and shimmering, but his feet knew where the rest of him was going, like muscle memory.

 

Combeferre wasn’t expecting to see a familiar assassin rounding the opposite corner.

 

In the light, he couldn’t hide. Neither of them could. The same mask of gloom they both wore had been ripped away. The other assassin’s once-shadowed features were on full display - soft, round face dotted with freckles, darting yet kind eyes and lithe hands that clasped his weapon loosely (a glinting butterfly knife this time, Combeferre had always personally preferred the sureness of a switchblade himself, not the cracking thunder and limited shots of a gun).

 

Combeferre liked to believe he was good at reading people, and nothing about this guy said _assassin_.

 

“Fancy seeing you here,” the other man said with an airy tone, lips upturning into a bemused smile, “Came to kill the fucker who let two hundred people get crushed to death?”

 

Combeferre dryly intoned, eyes rolling, as he lowered his gun, “Obviously. Because why else would I break into a building I don’t work at in the middle of the night?”

 

The man grinned, curls bouncing as he tilted his head to the side and Combeferre couldn’t believe this guy was an actual assassin. He looked like he belonged anywhere else but sneaking around at night in a near-empty office, steeling himself to commit murder, “Oh, you’re sarcastic, I like you.”

 

Something burned inside him, a lit flame singeing his insides, “Well, considering I murdered that last guy, I think this one is all yours.”

 

His smile widened, beaming brighter than the antiseptic lights above them, and oh. _Oh fuck. That’s what this is._

 

The assassin flicked open his blade, “With pleasure.”

 

***

 

(Eponine threw her head back and laughed, inky curls falling over her shoulders, “I can’t believe your type is knife-wielding assassins.”

 

“Fuck off.”)

 

***

 

Enjolras hadn’t wanted Combeferre to take this job - _“Let Feuilly handle it, you’re too close to this,” -_ and he was probably right, but this was his kill, it was not being taken away from him. The mark ordered the Navy to shoot holes into that boat of refugees, for Christ’s sake. This job belonged to him and Enjolras knew it.

 

 _(“It’s not going to make the injustice you faced disappear,”_ Enjolras had said empathetically, _“It’s not going to bring back those refugees.”_

 

_“Yeah, but it’ll make me feel a whole lot better.”)_

 

He’ll be in deep shit when he gets back, but it would be worth it. There was no voice of anguish, no part of him that screamed at him to stop, no contest. Every inch of himself was in harmony, a well-oiled machine, driven to do one thing, one simple task. He had never felt more sure of himself in his life.

 

 _“It could’ve been me, Enjolras,”_ his own voice echoed in his ears, like a shout into an empty, dark cavern, bouncing off walls, _“It could’ve been me.”_

 

He doubted his mark had any regrets when he issued that order and send a boat full of people to their watery demise, letting the white-churned waves and murky blue become their final resting place. The feeling of the rocking boat never really went away, the unsteadiness still crawled into his legs, the muscle memory of swaying and learning to walk on solid ground again still reverberated through his core. The mark had probably forgotten about it, sleeping peacefully in a four-poster bed while people desperately clung to splintered wood, crying and howling to stay afloat. _It could’ve been me._

 

The mark’s house wasn’t as ornate as a lot of others he had broken into, but still clearly belonging to a very rich man. It looked more like an office, professional and sterile, with tile flooring that made it difficult to remain silent, footsteps lightly sounding off the clinical ground. As he rounded the corner into the kitchen, he wasn’t surprised to hear a pearly, wind-chime voice.

 

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Combeferre,” said the assassin, twirling the butterfly knife between his fingers and gazing at him with sultry, heavy-lidded eyes, “At first, these dates were  interesting, but after the third dead fat cat, it’s getting a bit old.”

 

Combeferre glanced him up and down, worryingly calm at the thought of the man knowing his name (and how easy it was to find out - he will have to check with Eponine that their security is still strong later), “You’ve done your homework.”

 

The man gave him a lazy smile, leaning against the counter, “Oh c’mon, don’t play coy. I know you’ve done your research too.”

 

“Well then, Courfeyrac, what makes lawyer assassinate members of the _bourgeoisie_ in his down time?”

 

“Probably the same thing that makes a refugee become a political assassin,” he replied, “I’m not judging, just stating.”

 

It was an unspoken recognition, hanging heavy in the charged air between them, Combeferre saw in it the scathing way Courfeyrac’s mouth curled around the words _fat cat,_ in the vengeful heat of glowering eyes and the anger seeping into his ringing voice. It was a vision of utter, burning fury and despair that Combeferre saw in the mirror each day, the hollow bitterness and reproach that the world could ever be like this.

 

Courfeyrac’s huffed sigh shocked him out of his reverie, “I haven’t killed him yet, didn’t seem right. I figured you might want honour, considering.”

 

He didn’t say _revenge_ , but it was a close thing, Courfeyrac silently saying _make them pay for what he did to them, to you._ Its unsaid presence was a gust of muggy air, clinging to his skin, sticking to his clothes and weighing down his aching bones. He didn’t ask how the other assassin knew he would come on this night, let alone if he was plotting to kill the mark anyway, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. They were the same. They were fire and rage and would devour the decaying world whole.

 

Combeferre nodded, a silent _thank you_ to his new ally, and slunk into the mark’s bedroom

 

***

 

(“We should recruit him,” Feuilly joked, lip moving around the crushed spring roll in her mouth.

 

“I know you’re kidding,” said Cosette as she skewered another piece of meat with her chopsticks, “but this guy is singlehandedly assassinating the same targets as an experienced assassin-”

 

“-Thanks,” Combeferre interrupted.

 

“-with a highly trained team behind him. He’s something else.”)

 

***

 

This time, it was Combeferre who managed to surprise Courfeyrac.

 

He was hunched over, dimly illuminated by the glare of the streetlights as he struggled to pick the lock to the basement of the mark’s house (a neo-Nazi agitator this time).  Combeferre felt his chest tighten and lungs surge into his throat, choking and dizzying all at the same time. He never thought he would find a feeling as addictive as the sensation of his pitter-patter heart when he snuck into a mark’s bedroom, the shaking quiver of the fired gun and the rushed escape into bleak dark, but when the other assassin turned around and gave him a dazzling smile, almost radiant in the murky night, the hazy fear of discovery melted away.

 

Combeferre crouched next to him, pulling a pick from his boot, listening to the _click_ _clink_ of the metal as it turned, “What kind of assassin can’t pick a lock?”

 

Courfeyrac rolled his eyes as the door swung open, “I’m still learning.”

 

His heart thumped in his ears. _God,_ they were so close, Combeferre could see the rise and fall of Courfeyrac’s breathing, the stray, flyaway hairs framing his face, even in the pitch-black. The world blurred by, the sounds of cars screaming and winds whistling disappeared, vanishing into smoke. For a moment, a beautiful, fleeting moment, they were not assassins risking discovery, they could ignore the decay and corruption of the world, walk with their head downs - it all faded away into the nothingness of the night. The feeling of Courfeyrac holding his gaze was intoxicating, and Combeferre drunk it all in.

 

“I-I could teach you sometime,” Combeferre stuttered, voice dry and cracking in his throat, “To lockpick. If you’d like.”

 

Courfeyrac eyed him curiously, but there was something mischievous lying dormant, “Is that your way of asking me on a date?”

 

“Swapping tricks of the trade does sound incredibly romantic to me.”

 

He scoffed, but placed a cool hand against Combeferre’s cheek. His heart beat like a hummingbird, trying to escape the rigid cage of his chest, but then Courfeyrac leaned in and pressed their lips together, and all Combeferre could think about was the electricity singeing each point of contact, their knocking knees, the hand on his face, their lips. Kissing Courfeyrac was not at all what he expected - it was quiet, tranquil, like coming home to an empty, yet comforting house and relaxing into your skin. It was the luminous glow of sun-streaked light, warming and heavy, and the gentle caress of waves, licking the golden shores.

 

Courfeyrac pulled away after what felt like a lifetime, but he stayed close, resting their foreheads together, “Finally, a date that doesn’t involve murdering people.”

 

Combeferre laughed and shook his head, “Later. But for now, we’ve got a fascist to kill.”


End file.
